ArabMusicians

Our Little African Baby
The other night, Lee Anna’s babysitter (who is from a little more southern part of Africa) tried out a new hairstyle on her. As you can see, she didn’t quite get her whole head braided, but the part she did was pretty cute. We were extremely impressed that she got Lee Anna to sit still long enough to do anything with her hair. Most mornings I have to put her bow in as I’m chasing her down the hall!

FYI, the reason Lee Anna had a babysitter was so that we could attend the wedding of the guy we buy milk and bread from every day. They told us the wedding was at 8:00, so we got there at 9:00 and the bride and groom arrived about 30 minutes later. It was quite an experience, and we were sick that we forgot to bring our camera. Although we didn’t know a soul there except for the groom, everyone was excited to have some Americans at the party. They introduced us to all the couple’s family, brought us tea, and made sure the videographer got a close-up shot of us waving to the camera. It was at a “club” that was really just a big outdoor reception area. They couple entered to very loud music, and a group of women surrounded them clapping and dancing. After a while, the men all pulled their chairs up and sat around a table for the signing of the official papers. We’re not sure what took so long, but apparently there was still some bargaining going on between the two fathers. Finally, the papers were signed and they got ready to celebrate some more. We could have stayed into the early morning hours dancing and singing with them, but my 9-months-pregnant body was not interested in staying out all night. If I'm out of bed at 2 a.m., we better be at the hospital!

One more funny thing about that night: On the way home, Jason tried in his best Arabic to tell our taxi driver that there was a woman at our house keeping our baby and that after he dropped us off he needed to take her home. BUT instead of saying that our babysitter wanted to go to her house (bait-ha), Jason said “She wants to go to your house (baitik).” The taxi driver gave him a funny look and told him in Arabic “That is not good.” Luckily, he quickly realized what Jason meant to say and didn’t try to take our babysitter home with him. We decided not to tell her that Jason was busy tarnishing her reputation while she took care of our daughter!